Youth Soccer - Questions, Discussion and Stories *Update* College Commitment made. (1 Viewer)

[SwampDawg]

Well spring season came to a disappointing end Tuesday night with a 2-0 loss in the State Cup semi-finals. Disappointing because we beat this team 2-1 about a month ago without a couple of our best players and looked the better team. They just cam out with more intensity, they scored twice in the last 10 minutes of the first half. We had plenty of chances in the second half but their keeper stood on his head and made some great saves. He was man of the match no doubt.

They have like 3 weeks off before they start training for the National Championship tournament. We are headed out on his graduation trip next week but when we get back he needs to start his summer conditioning programs that he got from his college coach in between club trainings. They've played great in both qualifying tournaments so hopefully they can do the same in July. Just getting out of the group stage would be awesome but a lot depends on the draw how easy that will be.

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

We lost the final match of the season 7-5. By "we" I mean the parents vs a bunch of 8yr olds.

 

[SwampDawg]

We lost the final match of the season 7-5. By "we" I mean the parents vs a bunch of 8yr olds.

Obviously need to learn to make better use of your size advantage...lol

 

[SwampDawg]

My son got his college game schedule, pretty much as expected except one. They play at PSU. I thought when I first saw it that it was a mistake, it must be one of their satellite campuses of which many are also D3. Nope, going to Happy Valley for their Senior Day game. It will be a cool experience and a chance to play at a great venue.

 

[SwampDawg]

About to start the last week of the youth soccer journey. Fly out Sunday for the USYS National Championships and the last three to five games of his youth career. Hoping the boys put in a great effort, going to be hot in Florida, the real feel for next week varies between 106 and 111 each day.

31 days until college training camp starts.

 

[El Floppo]

About to start the last week of the youth soccer journey. Fly out Sunday for the USYS National Championships and the last three to five games of his youth career. Hoping the boys put in a great effort, going to be hot in Florida, the real feel for next week varies between 106 and 111 each day.

31 days until college training camp starts.

Where'd he end up going?

And very cool about nationals. My club could never make it out of CA to regionals. Always right there, but kept losing in late stages including the finals my last year.

 

[SwampDawg]

About to start the last week of the youth soccer journey. Fly out Sunday for the USYS National Championships and the last three to five games of his youth career. Hoping the boys put in a great effort, going to be hot in Florida, the real feel for next week varies between 106 and 111 each day.

31 days until college training camp starts.

Where'd he end up going?

And very cool about nationals. My club could never make it out of CA to regionals. Always right there, but kept losing in late stages including the finals my last year.

King's College, it's a D3 school about and hour and half from home so nice for us as all of his league games are within 2 1/2 hours, they have a few non-league in upstate NY that we may or may not go depending on how much he is playing as a freshman. He really liked the coach and the fact that his area of study had like 15 to 1 ratios in classes and like 8 to 1 in labs.. They are playing at Penn State which is pretty cool. It's Penn States senior night and funny seeing them sandwiched between Michigan State and UCLA on their schedule.

His club coach has gotten teams to nationals the past couple of years, two years ago he had the U19's in the championship game (they lost on a late PK) and the U18's in the semis, plus he's won two National Championships when he was at another club so he's done a really good job of preparing them for the games that mattered so far. They got a decent draw as well, a couple of the real power houses that end up bringing a bunch of MLS Next players are in other groups and they got a team they beat 4-1 earlier this year in their group. But at this point every team is good so you need to be on every game.

 

[SwampDawg]

And that is a wrap on the youth soccer career for my son. They finished pool play 1-1-1 and missed out on advancing by about 20 seconds of stoppage time. First game we scored about 2 minutes in and carried a 1-0 lead through the half, gave up two goals early in the second half but fought back to get the 2-2 draw with a late goal. Game two was a good scoreless battle until they scored of a corner on the last play of the first half. We created a handful of chances in the second half but couldn't get one home until about 6 minutes to play to even it at one. The rest of the game and in the 6 minutes of stoppage time we were the team taking it to them and creating chances but couldn't get it in the net. Then they got a counter off of our attack and got numbers forward. I will say I thought we had them stopped and the second kid made a really heads up sweet pass to the third player trailing and they scored, ref blew the whistle and that was game. Oddly enough there was so much stoppage time because one of their players used a derogatory term toward one of our players which required them calling the head official over. Because the ref didn't see directly who said it he just warned both coaches and no card was issued. Today we won 1-0 . Had we held on for the tie yesterday the 1-0-2 record would have won the group for us.

Glad we get another 4 years of watching him play college and likely some for of summer league but hard to believe the youth journey is over.